


Answered

by billspilledquill



Category: Grantchester (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Microfic, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Religious Conflict, Season 02 | Episode 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-09 22:32:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18926290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: It must have been worse, Sidney thought, almost blaming himself for thinking he might ever feel it, that he might everbeginto understand it. It must have been worse. So much worse.





	Answered

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like everything I have written so far has been practically the same thing. But here I am, back again, writing yet another plotless fic about self-inflicted conflict.

 

 

 

 

> ####  _**1 Corinthians 13:12:** _
> 
> _“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”_

 

 

 

God answered him.

God had answered him in different ways throughout Sidney’s life. In Cambridge. In the damp, warm interior of a tank, packed of ten people that felt like a thousand. In the Belsen camp, when he witnessed the world’s sufferings, God had answered.

What Sidney, despite having First in Theology at Cambridge, had never seen: God in every moving limb, in every breathing stutter. The day when he rode in with the British Army, young, unafraid, was struck with the image of a mother cradling her child, even when it was dead, even when the embrace, wide and warm as it could be, did not change a thing. God was in that useless, yet brave act of rebellion, that revolt against that unearned death, violence, and disease. God had answered him that day. And he had never stopped answering since.

Mrs M. did not knock today.

He realised, belatedly perhaps, that Leonard had. Sidney did not realise a lot of things, but selfishness; the pure, unadulterated _need_ to be selfish— that Sidney realised it very well, and fairly quickly. He did not answer the door.

Leonard opened it nevertheless. His eyes— bless him, kind soul— did not stray to his unshaved cheek or the empty whiskey bottle behind the stack of runaway papers on his desk. He was looking at him, glaring, in a kind way that only Leonard can do, glared with fingers on his lips.

Sidney said, dragged, really, the words longer than they should. His voice strained by alcohol, “Leonard?”

“We’re worried,” Leonard admitted in a breath. His fingers tapping anxiously on his lower lip. They remembered Sidney of pianos he saw at the Cambridge halls, some made for decorations, some not. “Mrs M. has been destroying the kitchen counter with that quick temper of hers.”

“Is she angry?” Sidney asked, because that was the only thing to ask. Of course she is, her nature was defined by two feelings— love and anger— usually the latter. 

Leonard shook his head. Sidney’s eyes trailed back to his glass. His fingers twitching on his seat, resisting the urge to drown, drown, drown. Sidney covered his face with the heels of his hand. Shame was coiling so deep inside him, it felt like something might explode. _It’s unfair._

“Are you angry with me, then?” Sidney asked, as he heard the shifting of weight, Leonard coming closer, his hand on Sidney’s shoulder. Deeper, he thought, I have to coil deeper _in_.

“Of course not.” The answer came as quickly as the question. The firm hand, the scent of Mrs M.’s afternoon tea. “As I said, we are all worried.”

Surprisingly, perhaps not, that answer did not bring him any relief or gratitude. It felt wrong, like he wasn’t understood, as least not the way he should be. Only God knew what he was. Yet God wasn’t answering, now, with Leonard’s too sweet words and the feeling of being dirty, drifting, now lied with him.

God hadn’t answered him, not since the boy hanged. Because God wasn’t there after the boy was hanged. He can’t be.

(Frightened, frightened eyes. They look at Sidney and they say: save me. They look at him at say: it is unfair. My god, my god, my god. They are so frightened. Sidney is so frightened.) 

“I’m sorry,” Sidney said quietly, flinching at how meaningless the words sounded. How little he meant them, how little it would mean if he did. It is unfair, was what he wanted to say, it is so unfair.

Then, _it is only alright when I bleed, it is only alright when I die._ Then, as an afterthought, but always, always in the back of his mind: _It is so, so unfair._

He had only realised Leonard’s soft click of the door after pressing his eyes, submitting to the pressure of the heel of his hand, pressing, pressing, pressing, until he saw stars and yellow and red. Sidney wondered whether that was how the boy had felt when they put the rope around him, round and round, yellow, red, and stars.

It must have been worse, Sidney thought, almost blaming himself for thinking he might ever feel it, that he might ever _begin_ to understand it. It must have been worse. So much worse.

 

* * *

 

Sidney did wash his hands, once to clean them, twice to break them.

It was not about— blood. They were no blood on his hands, at least that was what he saw when he rubbed the cheap towel over and over the thumb and the index. It was about— red. Sidney stared at the red, skin rubbed raw and nails cut short, short, short.

“Geordie,” Sidney said when they have both had two bottles of whiskey each. “I can’t hear you, Geordie. Speak louder.”

Geordie’s hands were clean, Sidney’s saw even when his eyes twitched at every movement of light, they were clean and skin already touched by age. Geordie’s eyes were closed, his mouth gulping the away the rest of his cheap whiskey. His neck moving; Adam’s apple throbbing. Sidney held himself still at that image; the fact of unnatural desire is nothing, only a shade more humiliating than the fact that he desires at all and can’t stop himself. Hating and loving are bad enough; this greedy desiring is filthy. 

“Sid,” Geordie started, the back of his hand wiping away the whiskey. Sidney’s eyes trailed over the lips, where they ended up. The lips were chapped. Did he beat him that bad? “I said, Sidney,” Geordie all but whispered. “That if you’re serving god, then why He did not answer?”

It is unfair, he thought. Sidney didn’t have the strength to say it. He doubt he ever will. But it is so unfair, that he saw red, for a moment, like he did in the vicarage.

(Frightened, frightened eyes. Sidney’s knuckles hitting Geordie’s jaw, over the words, _who did you kill?_ over the words, _are you seeing yourself in that boy?_ Frightened, the boy’s eyes flashing when Geordie’s on the ground, the cross just above them. _What was his name?_ Sidney is becoming that boy, with mind too numb for judgement and _killing_ —)

“He answered,” Sidney answered softly. “He always answer, Geordie.”

“Are you contractually obligated to say that?”

“I am a man of faith. Of course I am.”

“More of a womaniser and a drunkard than a vicar in dog-collar, I must say,” Geordie replied mindlessly. His hands reaching for his pocket, probably reaching that old rusty coins that he always carry with him. Sidney imagined the rough patch of skin that rub against the silver, and shivered.

“I serve God,” Sidney said as a last attempt to stop his eyes from following Geordie’s every movement. “I am not God.”

Geordie looked at him. Guilt, he realised, that made his face so fascinating. He shook his head. “He answered you,” Geordie said quietly over the now empty glass. “So what did He say?”

The _need_ to be selfish, to be good, to be honest, they all swirled up in his chest, hammering in his chest. It is so unfair. “I shouldn’t have punched you,” Sidney said.

Geordie didn’t ask- didn’t replied to that particular comment. They only had an alcohol issue: the glasses were not emptied quicker than they used to.

 

* * *

 

 

The boy had sobbed when they wrapped their cloth around his neck. He had looked at him when they had that rope around his neck. His eyes didn’t stop looking at him even when the rope was no longer around it. The neck broke, then Sidney was left to sob alone.

Sidney kept saying— reciting the Bible from memory— he kept saying, he kept rambling, he kept looking. It’s alright. It’s alright. _It’s only alright when I bleed, it’s only alright when I die._ And God had answered him, saying, _it’s so unfair._

God had answered. If only Sidney had listened.

 

 


End file.
